衞周安教务长2019届本科生毕业典礼致辞全文（中英）

上海纽约大学2019届本科生毕业典礼致辞

教务长 |衞周安

俞校长，Hamilton校长，雷蒙校长，朋友们，同事们，毕业生家长们，请和我一起恭喜2019届的毕业生们！各位毕业生，我谨代表上海纽约大学全体成员，对你们的毕业致以最衷心的祝贺！

Chancellor Yu! President Hamilton! Vice-Chancellor Lehman! Friends! Colleagues! Parents! Ladies and Gentlemen! Salute with me our students of the class of 2019! Dear students, on behalf of the whole NYU Shanghai community, I offer you heartfelt congratulations!

我们生活在一个充满了或大或小矛盾的世界里。在上海，哪怕是小小的一个街区，你也可以从过去漫步到未来；你会亲眼看到，中国既是世界上最强大的经济体之一，又在某种角度上还是一个发展中国家。在全球层面上，政治越来越关注更局域化、本地化的议题，而全球的联系却越来越紧密。有些人越来越富有，而有些人越来越贫困：不平等的程度在增加，而不是减少。曾经界限清晰的私人领域与公共领域，变得越来越相互融合。女性在公共生活中拥有史无前例的卓越表现，全球有数十位女性国家元首或首相；在美国，有不少六位女性在参加总统竞选，#MeToo反性骚扰运动似乎成为了女性权力意识增长的一个转折点。然而，对女性缺乏足够的尊重却成为了一个愈发普遍和可见的问题。这一切是如此的矛盾！

We live in a world of contradictions both large and small. In Shanghai, in the space of a city block, you can stroll out of the past into the future, and you can see for yourself the evidence that China is simultaneously one of the world’s most powerful economies, yet is still in some respects a developing nation. Around the world, politics is becoming more and more locally focused and yet the globe is daily more interconnected. Some people are getting very much richer while others are getting very much poorer: inequalities are growing, not shrinking. The private and public spheres of life, which used to be clearly delineated, blend daily more and more into one another. Women are unprecedentedly prominent in public life, with almost a dozen female heads of state or prime ministers; in the United States, no less than six women are running for president, while the #MeToo movement has seemed to mark some kind of turning point in this regard. And yet an extraordinary lack of respect for women has become increasingly both commonplace and highly visible. How contradictory it all is!

我们该如何认识刚才所说的，和其他一些围绕在我们身边的矛盾之处？对立的事物经常会被认为是完全无法兼容的，如“极端对立”，但更合适的理解其实是它们处在一个平面的两端，两者之间相互交融、互为基石，且有可能在各自发展之外互为转换。矛盾也关乎动力，以及萦绕在我们周围的短暂性和可变性。

What are we to make of all these contradictions, and the many others that daily surround us? Opposites are often thought of as completely incompatible—“polar opposites,” but they are best understood as situated at the two ends of a single spectrum along which one blends into the other, contains the seeds of the other, and may transform into its opposite even as it also transforms it into something new. Contradiction also is all about dynamism and about the transience and changeability all around us.

许多伟大的思想家都对矛盾这一现象从不同方面进行过思考。我想简单地提两位，他们都曾以不同方式影响到你们的生活，并且，我相信会继续影响着你们。

Many great thinkers have applied their minds to the phenomenon of contradiction, in different ways, and I want to refer very briefly to just two of them, two people whose ideas, in different ways, have impacted your lives and will, I believe, continue to do so.

你们应该还记得，四年前我们在“全球视野下的社会”课里学习过，政治领袖及理论家毛泽东曾在他负有盛名的文章《矛盾论》中，论述了矛盾双方是如何相互依赖和互为前提。他描述了矛盾的对立统一性——相互矛盾的现象是如何在一定背景下可以相统一，以及一些事物是如何可以转化成矛盾的另一面然后再转化回来，或者演化为新的事物。这篇文章当然也是对中华人民共和国建国具有重要意义的文件之一。和你们一样，我也是在大学时期学习的这篇文章，文章所提出的这些观点陪伴了我今后的人生。

As you will recall from GPS 4 years ago—the theorist and political leader Mao Zedong eloquently wrote in his famous essay “on contradiction” (矛盾论) about the interdependence of opposites and how one cannot exist without the other. He described the contingency of contradictions—how contradictory phenomena may become compatible in certain contexts, and how something may indeed transform into its opposite and then transform back again or change into something else. This essay is of course one of the founding documents of the People’s Republic of China. Like you, I read it in college, and I will say that the ideas it set forth never really left me.

毛主席的首要身份是政治理论家，其次才是一位诗人。我现在想请你们关注另一个人，他的首要身份是诗人，其次才是常常被人忘记的、一名创造出了“消极能力”的这个你们现已熟捻于心的概念的杰出理论家。这个人就是英国诗人约翰·济慈，他去世时才25岁，也就比你们稍年长一些，但他在短暂的一生里创造了许多经久不衰的价值。

Mao was a political theorizer first, and a poet second, and I want to turn your attention now to someone who was a poet first and foremost, and is not so often thought of as a great theorizer, but who coined the phrase “Negative Capability” for a concept that by now should be second nature to you. I am speaking of the English poet John Keats, who during his short life—he was not a lot older than you when he died, 25 years old—created so much of enduring value.

消极能力指的是拥抱不确定性、接受模糊性以及安于神秘与怀疑，而非性急地追求事实和原因的积极意向。这就是济慈说的“可以造就一个有卓越成就的人的品质”（英文之所以用“男人”这个词，是因为彼时人们基本不相信女性也可以取得同样的成就）。济慈理解，人生充满了一系列未作答或只能慢慢去回答的问题，以及许多锁上了的，最终有可能打开或无法打开的门。他清楚地认识到，人类在艺术和科学中欢乐与创造力的基石，存在于对可能性和思维开放性的培育。济慈最富盛名的诗作都创作于1819年，距今正好200年，这些诗作精妙的阐述了他的观点。在《秋颂》一诗中，他将秋季形容为雾气洋溢、果实圆熟，以及成熟的顶峰和腐朽的开始。（如中国也会用的一个说法，“月满则亏”）。在《夜莺颂》一诗中，济慈将他从聆听夜莺歌声中的超然欢乐，与因他哥哥肺结核病去世而引发的对现实世界中人类悲苦、困顿的感受相对照。据称，济慈自己也是因为肺结核而去世。在《忧郁颂》一诗中，对于强烈的悲伤与热烈的欢愉是一枚硬币的两面这一事实，济慈同时歌颂与哀悼，认为两者互生互造，提示着我们那围绕在身边的或好或坏的短暂与变化。

Negative Capability refers to a willingness to embrace uncertainty, to live with ambiguity and to prefer the beauty of mystery to “irritable reaching after fact and reason.” This, Keats said, was “the quality that went to form a Man of Achievement” (for in those days people did not generally consider women to be likely to achieve much). Keats understood life to consist of a series of unanswered or only gradually answered questions, locked rooms to which the doors may—or may not--eventually open, and he saw clearly that the foundation of human joy and creativity, in both the arts and the sciences, lies in nurturing a sense of possibilities and open-mindedness.Keats’ most celebrated poems, all written in 1819, 200 years ago this year, illustrate this exquisitely. In his Ode to Autumn he describes that season of, as he put it, mists and mellow fruitfulness, as at once the pinnacle of ripeness and the beginning of decay. One is reminded here of the Chinese observations that “at noon the sun begins to set.” In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats contrasts his transcendent joy at hearing the nightingale’s song with the sorrow of human grief and sickness, referring to his brother’s death from tuberculosis, an illness which also claimed Keats soon thereafter. In Ode on Melancholy he simultaneously celebrates and laments the fact that acute sadness and passionate happiness are two sides of the same coin, one producing the other, all indicative of the transience and change that surround us, for better or for worse.

今天是你们在上海纽约大学四年生活既感伤又盼望的结束，也是你们下一阶段人生既忐忑又期待的开始。毛泽东与济慈，这两位看上去相互矛盾的先哲，深刻理解你们今天所感受到的欢乐与悲伤并存的感觉，正如我们此刻对你们的感觉一样。先哲们的思想和我们一样，将伴随你们，无论你们去到哪里，无论你们在做什么。祝贺你们，2019届毕业生！

Today marks the dreaded yet much anticipated end of your four years at NYU Shanghai, at the same time as it marks the dreaded yet much anticipated beginning of the next phase of your life. Mao and Keats, those two seeming opposites, understood the joy and the sadness you feel today and that we feel with you, and they will go with you as we will wherever you are and whatever you do. Congratulations, Class of 2019!

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